Posts Tagged: Hillary Clinton

I say this as someone who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary: People who feel that voting for Hillary Clinton next month is “voting for the lesser of evils” (it’s not the lesser of evils, she isn’t evil)…people who think that it’s important to make a statement by voting for a third party candidate who (in this case) cannot possibly win, thus taking a vote away from the only person who in this situation can stop a neo-fascist demagogue, are people who care about their emotions than they care about the poor–the poor, the working class, will be hurt if *any* Republican gets into office, including Trump who’s against an increase in minimum wage, against food stamps.

They’re people who care about their hurt feelings more than they care about the environment, the biosphere–which will be irretrievably damaged if another Republican gets into the White House, especially if that Republican is Donald “climate change isn’t real” Trump.

They don’t care about women and children who will die in the planned carpet bombing of the Middle East Trump trumpets about.

They don’t care about Democracy, which will be definitively undermined if Trump gets control of the Supreme Court.

They care about taking a stand that will make them feel distinctive more than they care about women who will be hurt by the inevitable erosion in women’s rights when Trump is elected.

They only care that their particular, personal schemata, their philosophy of “if it’s not everything I want it’s nothing” doesn’t take precedence. They fantasize, perhaps, that “Trump’s election will bring about a leftist revolution”–something they actually know isn’t true.

Their decision is completely emotional. It’s anger. It’s not reason. And they don’t care who gets hurt.

–Several points I want to make about the Democratic candidates for President:

1) Bernie Sanders has no responsibility to quit the Presidential race before the Democratic convention has made its choice. He genuinely has a purpose in continuing through the convention, whether he’s likely to be nominated or not. At the very least, Bernie is creating a political base that will have enough momentum to overturn the right-wing dominance of the House and the Senate. Overall, he is like a lens focusing national consensus on political reform: a genuine reform of campaign financing, the breaking up of financial “institutions” (is a pirate ship an institution?) into smaller, more regulated, less threatening structures; on meaningful regulation and single payer health care; on a reduction of military spending; on much better wages and conditions for Labor. . .And in order to accomplish that he needs to rally people into political determination and political action. This grassroots organization can be extended beyond the Presidential election, even if Hillary Clinton is elected. Sanders accomplishes this most effectively by using the pulpit, the stage, of the Presidential primary, to continue to rally his people toward that political revolution…

I’ll just add, while I think Sanders has a plan for reforming banks if he’s elected, he doesn’t need to have every step of that reform laid out now–he can organize that once elected, as long as we know what his goals are. And we do.

2) The right for years has has been exaggerating about the Clintons; has been spreading assumptions, jumping to conclusions, smearing them. The Clintons made their mistakes–the pumping up of prisons, the weakening of financial regulations. They have learned from their mistakes. And there’s nothing wrong with an ex-president being paid hefty speaker’s fees, and nothing wrong with a stateswoman, a person trying to rally support for the Clinton Foundation, with charging her own fees to speak. It’s done every damn day. It’s called lecturing. People did it for a living going back centuries.

There is no evidence–just accusations being taken as evidence–that she gave preference to any donors to the Clinton Foundation. The Clintons do not make money themselves from the Foundation, either. The problem is that the left, perhaps spurred by right-wing operatives, have been picking up on conservative exaggerations and slanders re Hillary Clinton–the new, young left has been appropriating these exaggerations from the right and even the far right. In short, they’re dancing on puppet strings for the right, when they attack her as corrupt–when there is really no evidence of actual corruption.

3) Conservatives, Libertarians, Theocrats, Trumpies–they all benefit when Bernie supporters lose their objectivity and spout insults and inject blind emotion into the contest; Clinton supporters are helping Trumpies and righties when they lose objectivity and rage at Bernie supporters. The divisiveness will divide the vote on the left; to some extent already has. The fascists love it when we on the left call each other fascists.

4) I am voting for Bernie in the primary–and again in the general election IF he gets the nomination… If Clinton gets the nomination I’ll vote for her. Clinton fans should vote for Bernie if he gets the nomination; Bernie followers should vote for Clinton if she gets it. And I am confident that Bernie Sanders will endorse Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination from the Democratic Party.

And if we vote in the general election for whoever is chosen as the Democratic Party’s nominee–each vote will trumpet a resounding No! to right-wing political opportunism and manipulation.

I THINK that Bernie Sanders will inevitably endorse Clinton–if she gets the nomination–and when he endorses her *most* Sanders supporters will vote for her in the general election. Maybe a fair number won’t. But the majority will. And I think that’ll just squeeze Trump out.

It has to work out like that, if the country is not to slide into the dust-heap of the lowest of the lowest common denominator–because apparently voters in Ohio and many other states don’t care about Trump’s racist statements (which he’s now trying to cover up), they don’t care about his flagrant slobbering after his daughter, his poor understanding (to put it kindly) of foreign policy, his floating the idea of killing lots of women and children in the Middle East because they’re the families (he supposes) of terrorists, his verbal degradation of women, his wife’s posing (presumably with his approval) in the nude for a major magazine, GQ, *while chained to a briefcase full of money*, his deliberately catalyzing violence at his rallies, his association with white supremacy, his cartoonlike plans to close the southern border–none of that bothers them.

So we have to hope that Sanders supporters, if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination–she probably will–will be forward-thinking enough to vote for her. I know he’ll be intelligent enough to endorse her.

If you wonder WHY Trump’s supporters follow him no matter what–it’s the power of magical thinking. The power of the primitive mind. The power of the subconscious: